Page 126 of Blood Feast

Lio laughed softly. “You needn’t apologize for your ancestors, my rose.”

She scowled. “I’d like to have words with Ebah right now. When she appeared to me in Btana Ayal, all she gave me were cryptic commands. Nothing so useful as, ‘By the way, if you ever need to get into that long-lost tower of mine in the eastern Tenebrae, just pull out a focus imbued with plant magic and that bloodthirsty ivy will be docile as a lamb.’”

Mak huffed. “And while she was at it, she could have told us what all of this is actually guarding.”

“It will be worth it,” Lio said. “She wouldn’t have gone to this much effort to hide it unless it was very important to her.”

“Any theories?” asked Lyros.

“Another ritual site, perhaps.” Lio held the drooping branches of a marsh tree out of Cassia’s way and let her go ahead of him. “One even more important than the last two.”

“We didn’t learn much from those,” Cassia grumbled.

“Didn’t we?” Lio asked her.

Mak rolled his eyes at Lio. “Anytime you get tired of his magic teacher tone, Cassia, let us know. We’ll knock it out of him for you.”

She gave Lio her secret smile over her shoulder. “That won’t be necessary.”

Lio smiled back.I do believe you like my magic teacher tone.

I can’t decide which part I enjoy most, you glass-tongued scrollworm. When you instruct me like a student, or praise me like a queen.

I will do either one you like if you can answer my next question.

Their faces must have betrayed their private conversation, for Mak whistled. “Why weren’t our magic lessons this interesting, Lyros?”

“Not fair at all,” Lyros said. “We might have become scholars if we’d gotten to polish our fangs instead of having to read boring scrolls.”

Lio cleared his throat, pulling his thoughts away from that bed in the tower room. “Can you name at least one thing we learned from each of the ritual sites we’ve visited?”

Cassia’s aura grew thoughtful. “Fighting for survival is what brings on a Silvicultrix’s beast magic. The ritual site under the lighthouse where we found the bones could be aligned with that affinity. Fertility and the stone circle might be connected to plant magic. Would that make sense?”

“Certainly,” Lio agreed.

She looked at him askance. “That’s not the answer you’re looking for.”

“All of that is important, but I think we learned something even more interesting from each site. Trust your intuition like Mak suggested. What did you feel?”

She paused to think again. “What didn’t belong was more interesting that what did.”

Lio nodded in encouragement.

“The Mage King’s fire was so strange to find in a Lustri ritual site. That tells us he wasn’t just a guest in Ebah’s passageways. He was a participant. They blended their magic somehow. As for the stone circle…no, this sounds ridiculous.”

“Try us,” Lio said.

“The standing stones reminded me of Btana Ayal.”

Lio was about to reply when Lyros broke in softly. “Do you hear that?”

They stopped speaking, and Lio listened.

Mak said, “There’s only one four-legger with us, but I can hear nine more.”

Such heavy footfalls could only belong to large creatures. The beasts were closing in from all different directions. Their party was already surrounded.

“I can’t feel their auras,” Lio said. “They aren’t normal animals.”

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